When an army of darkness falls from the sky, Alex Kingsley enlists the help of her male peers and ventures into spirit-infested lands to save humanity.
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She's an outcast cursed to consume the memories o...
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First of all, I want to thank every one of you for giving this book a chance and tagging along on this adventure with Alex and crew. All I've ever wanted was to share this story, so even if it never reaches an audience beyond Wattpad, I will be content to know that Alex has found her way into the minds and hearts of a few dedicated readers.
I started plotting this series back in 2012 when I found the concept of demon possession revolutionary. Fantasy creatures, magical powers, paranormal war, and dystopian politics were all storytelling elements I adored, and I'd always been fascinated by historical accounts of cross-dressing women. Now, putting the two together was not a groundbreaking idea—Mulan will forever remain my favorite Disney movie—but there was something lacking in the fiction I was consuming at the time, and that was a female protagonist I could relate to on a personal level, and also someone I could look up to, root for, laugh with, and befriend.
And that's how Alex "It-Was-An-Accident" Kingsley entered my life. Named after my first doll, with her chopped bangs, sharpie-colored eyelids, and broken arm. Inspired by the first mixed, Hispanic protagonist I fell in love with, Maximum Ride, and molded by own personal experience.
Growing up in a small desert town, surrounded by very religious, conservative peers, I not only shared Alex's passion for a feminist movement, but also environmental action and a push for LGBTQ/BIPOC civil rights. Conveniently, I was also around Alex's age when I completed the first draft of Breeder, so her behavior was largely influenced by my own youthful idealism, immaturity, and teen angst.
Unfortunately, that means I once shared Alex's distaste for fashion, makeup, materialistic hobbies, and all things I felt were societal expectations of women, not merely things many women enjoyed.
But then I went to college to major in Environmental Science, where I broke free from my small, close-minded community, and I shared a very small space with five very different girls. I worked an awful part-time job where I met my platonic soulmate—an Indian cosmetologist. I faced my own internalized misogyny. I grew up. I learned.
And I shredded my series down to its bones and rewrote it with a slightly different angle.
This is the path Alex will—grudgingly—venture down as well. So until she begins to value and respect all women in her life, I don't think I can call her a feminist icon. Not yet, at least. But someday, by the end of Book 3, I hope this series will have inspired other young female readers—and anyone who has ever felt overlooked, disregarded, and disrespected by their peers and government—to stand up for themselves and the voiceless, overcome the division that society has wedged between us, and fight for the rights we know we're warranted.
To quote my stubborn little spitfire, if we don't take a stand, who will?
